Elements such as images and other items in a software application delivered through a content processing device such as a set top box (STB) may be common to, or at least similar in, many screens displayed in the application. For example, a particular menu, perhaps with some variations, may be displayed in many screens in an application. Nonetheless, a developer writing such an application generally must repeat the deployment of elements such as images and the like for various screens, even when the various screens include identical images, etc. Further, if an element is updated or changed references to the element for each of the screens in which it appears must also be updated or changed.
Moreover, an application that must repeatedly retrieve large amounts of the same data is inefficient, providing poor user response times, among other problems. Some content processing devices have minimal memory resources, and therefore have problems supporting applications with numerous data elements.